Thursday, January 12, 2012

***It's difficult for me to reconcile the flurry of activity surrounding the Reds THIS offseason with the sheer lack of activity LAST season. I still feel like there's much more to the story. It simply doesn't add up. Why would Walt Jocketty stand by and watch the season slip away last year, but make costly moves, via free agency and trade, to improve this year? What's the difference between this year and last? Were the Reds under stricter budget constraints last year? Is Jocketty motivated by a lack of job security this year? Did Jocketty receive new information of a type that made the decision to trade Yonder easier? I just feel like we're missing a big piece to the 2011 puzzle, one that would go a long towards explaining one of the most frustrating seasons of recent vintage.

***The Reds named Mack Jenkins assistant pitching coach at the MLB level. I wouldn't know Mack Jenkins if he jumped out of my soup, but I approve of this idea in the abstract. Given the struggles of the rotation last year, it certainly can't hurt to add a new voice to the coaching staff.

***For my money, the Reds should be pushing hard to trade for Travis Snider. The Reds have a hole in leftfield and could use another lefthanded bat in the lineup. Snider seems like an ideal change of scenery type player who could blossom in new surroundings. And, given that the Jays could reasonably be souring on him, Snider could be priced to move.

***Just for the record, I still think it was a mistake for the Reds not to pursue Matt Murton and Erik Bedard. Murton is a player in need of a legitimate opportunity. He plays leftfield very, very well and his offensive profile is of the type that the Reds could really use. His baseline is likely .285/.350/.450 (though it could be better in GABP), which means that he would have slotted in nicely in the 2nd spot in the lineup. He wouldn't have excelled in any area, but he would have provided a contact based approach to a lineup that is occasionally inconsistent due to the high rate of strikeouts. Murton is the type of undervalued talent who could be a very good value in his first 4-5 years of service time. Once he hits free agency, he may look less desirable, but that's a worry for a future date. Last year, Murton spent time in Japan and broke Ichiro's single season hit record. That type of experience could only increase his confidence and likelihood of success in the Majors. Now that Yonder is gone, Murton strikes me as being a borderline ideal acquisition.

As for Bedard, I think he was the steal of the offseason. The Pirates signed him for $4.5M. Last year, Bedard started slow, was truly brilliant for two months, suffered an injury that cost him a month, and then finished out the season respectably. While the injury did cost him a month or more, it was a knee injury unrelated to the arm injuries that had previously derailed his career.

I thought Bedard was a good candidate to bounce back in 2011. And, I think he's poised to contribute at a high level in 2012. In 2009, Bedard pitched only 83.0 innings for the Mariners before he underwent major shoulder surgery. After rehab, his velocity had completely returned, he was throwing well, and on the verge of returning to the majors in 2010 when he had to undergo a second shoulder surgery. That surgery cost him the entire 2010 season, but that surgery was minor in comparison to the first. So, the minor shoulder surgery was less of a threat to his career than the major one and it actually gave him more time to recover from the major surgery. So, Bedard was ready in 2011.

He'll always be injury prone, but that is more than factored into his $4.5M salary. At that price, even half a season of good production would be worth it.

***I recently wrote about the sweeping changes being undertaken in two NL Central front offices. However, what I didn't include in that write-up was an interesting Reds related subplot. It was reported that part of the reason why Walt Jocketty parted ways with the St.Louis Cardinals is that he was unable to get along with then Cardinal V.P. Jeff Luhnow. That was then. Now, Luhnow is the new GM in Houston, one of the teams completely overhauling their front office in an effort to move towards a data-driven model of operation. Of course, the dispute being Luhnow and Jocketty could have been a clash of personalities, but more likely it was a clash of ideologies.

In my previous write up, I discussed the data-driven approach that Luhnow seems to want to implement and the difference between an organization built around the skills of individual employees and an organization that creates a structure to drive the operations. All of which begs the question, was the friction between Jocketty and Luhnow driven by the latter's staunch belief in statistical analysis and the former's preference for more traditional scouting? Or, does Jocketty favor an organization built around the brilliance of the individual more than the structure of the organization? More than likely, the answer is both.

In the end, I suspect that Luhnow was tasked with implementing an organizational structure in the Cardinal organization and Jocketty simply could not operate effectively within such a structure. Either the Cardinals outgrew Jocketty or Jocketty and the Cardinals simply grew apart. Whatever the reason, I wouldn't be surprised if, on some level, bad blood developed between the Astros and Reds. Of course, the fact that MLB, in its infinite wisdom, is moving the Astros to the AL West probably undercuts such a rivalry before it could even flare up.

*** Does anyone out there believe that Aroldis will be developed as a starter? The Marshall trade and the Madson signing are "all in" kind of moves. Given that our rotation seems to be set with (1) J.Cueto (2) M.Latos (3) B.Arroyo (4) M.Leake (5) H.Bailey, there seems to be no room for Aroldis. In light of their "win now" mindset, it simply doesn't make sense for the Reds to keep Aroldis at triple-A to develop as a starter. It seems highly likely that he'll join Madson and Marshall to give the Reds an electric back of the bullpen.

For better or worse, Aroldis became a reliever the moment the Reds decided to rely on him in their MLB bullpen.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Lately, I've come to a number of realizations, not all of them baseball related but all of them relevant. First, the quality (such as it is) of the writing on this blog is directly related to what I read. If I'm not being exposed to new ideas and information, much of which I can apply to baseball and the Reds, then my writing tends to stagnate. Second, and as an example of the first point, over the past week a number of writings have combined to help reshape my view of Major League Baseball front offices, their role and how they operate.

In part, my revised view is a happy accident relating to the collision between (1) a very good book ("The Powers That Be" by David Halberstam) that I'm reading about the information distribution business (aka: media) and how it shapes all facets of American life and (2) the revolution happening in the NL Central this offseason. It has taken a surprisingly long time for the new wave of baseball thinking to reach the Central, but this offseason has seen it hit with tsunami like force. For all intents and purposes, the wave started on the West Coast where the A's were looking for a way to compete. It spread gradually in a few directions, but the next big step was when it was carried across the country and landed in the uber-competitive AL East where the Boston Red Sox were looking to change decades upon decades of futility. Now, after penetrating both coasts, the new wave of thinking and operating is coming to an NL Central team near you. Both the Astros and, most noticeably, the Cubs have changed GMs and are beginning to completely overhaul their front offices and their overall methods of operating. That makes for interesting times in the NL Central and challenging times in the future for the Reds.

In light of the efforts of the Northside regime to, once again, overcome decades and decades of futility, I've become more interested in how and why these new front offices are able to effectively change the culture. We're talking about cultures so flawed and consistently ineffective that fans and media created "Curse" narratives, Bambinos and Billygoats, to explain their lack of success. Facing that level of consistent futility, it can be safely assumed that there was something greater at work than the individual talents of the GM. The problem had to be systemic, as countless GMs were rotated in and out of the top posts in these organizations and yet the futility continued. So, the problems clearly ran deeper than just the individual talents of one person.

That was the state of my thinking when I read the following from David Halberstam:

"What it lacked, (Ben) Bradlee and his friend Phil Geyelin sometimes agreed, was cruising speed. The New York Times had cruising speed, the Times was not a product of one or two men's talent and brilliance, it was the sum of its many parts, often at the expense of the individual talent. The Times was special because of its awesome and often stifling structure, it could carry weaker reporters and raise them to the general level of the product just as frequently as it pulled more talented reporters down to that same level. The Times was on a plateau, a moderately high one, all by itself; the (Washington) Post was a series of peaks and valleys."

Even though the blurb discusses the issue in the context of newspapers, it applies equally to organizations of all types. To build a consistently successful organization requires implementation of an effective structure. In Major League Baseball, an effective structure is one that supports quality decision making by consistently increasing the probability of making a successful decision: Cruising speed. A less structured organization may be able to generate success in spurts, but any type of consistent, sustained success requires a structure. It's the system vs. the individual distinction, basically the difference between an organization built on the individual
talents of a GM and an organization built on a structure that lends
itself to a systematic way of operating.

With that in mind, it becomes much clearer what the new regimes in Chicago and Houston are attempting to do. Basically, harness the power of all the organizational assets into an effective and efficient system for the collection and distribution of data. Over the years, unsuccessful organizations have either had no structure at all or, even worse, an ineffective structure that has been ingrained into the organizational fabric by each and every decision made. The efforts of these front offices to install new structures became even more clear when I stumbled across this story, discussing Jeff Luhnow's efforts to rebuild Houston's front office, on MLB.com:

HOUSTON -- Jeff Luhnow has long been a proponent of sabermetrics, so
it shouldn't come as a surprise that one of his first duties as Astros
general manager was to bring in someone to help sort through the massive
amount of data that's available.

Luhnow announced Tuesday he had hired Sig Mejdal from the Cardinals,
where he had worked with Luhnow for the previous six years and was most
recently the team's director of amateur draft analytics. Mejdal's title
with the Astros will be director of decision sciences.

The Astros also announced they had hired Stephanie Wilka as coordinator
of amateur scouting, a position previously held by Mike Burns before he
took a job as an area scout with the Blue Jays.Mejdal was involved with modeling, analysis and data-driven
decision-making throughout all levels of the Cardinals organization and
was a key contributor in the Draft decision processes that led to more
Major League players than any other organization during that timeframe.

"It's a capacity that he was involved in and helping us build when I was
with the Cardinals, and he had a lot skills and passion in that area,"
said Luhnow, who was hired away from the Cardinals last month. "He's
going to be a key member of the front office."

Luhnow described Mejdal's new role as a systematic method of combining
all the information you can collect on players, whether it's using
previous performance information, health and medical information and
opinions of scouts who have laid eyes on players.

"It's really a systemic approach to combining all the information into a
decision-making tool to assist people, whether it's the scouting
director or farm director or general manager, in making decisions,"
Luhnow said. "There is a pretty significant component with it that's
data-driven and based off of using stats from the past to project future
performance. It's definitely a critical component."

Wilka, meanwhile, has previously worked in the PR department of the Red
Sox and served as executive director of the philanthropic arm of the
Dodgers. She has an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a law degree
from Pepperdine.

"She has a passion about baseball and should be a good addition," Luhnow said.
Mejdal earned two engineering degrees at the University of California at
Davis and later completed advanced degrees in operations research and
cognitive psychology/human factors. He has also worked at Lockheed
Martin in California and for NASA.

Mejdal has been active in baseball statistics and analytics since
earning his membership in The Society for Baseball Research (SABR) while
in grade school.

The article lays out the approach that the Astros wish to implement and the importance they place on information of all types and from all sources. The long running debate of sabermetrics vs. traditional scouting has overlooked the key point, namely that ALL valid information is of value to the organization. The Astros' decision making is data-driven and ensuring both the quality and volume of that data is paramount to the success of such a system.

To me, there are also inferences to be drawn from the article based on both the people hired and their respective job titles. It's clear that Luhnow's prime objective in the early going is improving
the information gathering and distribution abilities of the organization. After all, a decision
maker is only as good as the information on which he relies.

Oddly enough, I first heard of Sig Mejdal from the book Fantasyland, which detailed a writer's attempt to win his fantasy baseball league by hiring a team that blended the traditional scouting viewpoint with statistical analysis, the latter viewpoint strongly represented by statistical analyst Sig Mejdal. But, one of things that strikes me as particularly interesting in this blurb is his job title: Director of Decision Sciences. A job title which seems to both (1) indicate the importance the organization places on data and (2) set Mejdal's individual responsibilities as everything right up to the decision point.

In a data-driven system like this, the information flows in an upward direction from all points in the organization. In essence, the organization is a pyramid with all information flowing from the base up to the top, where the decision makers reside. If you generate a consistent, reliable flow of information, then you improve the ability and effectiveness of the decision maker. And, the longer this flow of information runs through these defined channels, the more and more ingrained they become in the organizational fabric (forget Billygoats, this is the real curse of inept baseball organizations). Further, the organization can have sustained success because, to a certain extent, once the decision maker installs this system he himself becomes more fungible. If all the information for making the proper decision is readily at hand for the decision maker, then the specific abilities of that decision maker become somewhat less important. The decision is driven by the process, not the individual. At that point, you have established a measure of organizational intelligence, which supersedes, and should outlast, any single individual.

As for the second hire, Stephanie Wilka, at first it seemed an odd one. Admittedly, I don't know anything about Ms. Wilka, so I'm only going off what is written in this article. At first, she didn't strike me as being qualified (though she could certainly be an undercover scouting genius), but upon further review it's patently obvious that it was my own understanding of the job qualifications that was wrong. If someone is hired as the Coordinator of Amateur Scouting despite having no background in scouting (bringing instead publicrelations and ??philanthropy?? experience to the table), then it seems likely that her responsibilities are something other than rating players on the 20-80 scale. In actuality, I believe her job is ensuring the proper flow of information up the ranks. She's not there to scout, but rather to manage those who do, ensuring both the quality and flow of the scouting information coming from her underlings. In short, the emphasis in her job title should be front-loaded, as she is more "Coordinator" than "Amateur Scout". It's important to have those who generate the information, but it's equally important to have those who verify the quality of the information and facilitate its distribution. Again, this hiring seems to be an organizational effort to ensure that good information flows up to the top of the pyramid for consideration by the decision makers.

Finally, once the information is gathered and arrives at the pinnacle of the pyramid, it has to be properly compiled and presented to the decision maker for it to be useful. So, it's not enough just to collect and compile the information, but it has to be readily sortable and accessible for the decision maker. And, not surprisingly, many organizations have implemented proprietary computer programs to manage the data generated by so many different sources.

Now I can click on the screen... ." Epstein says as he executes a few keystrokes, "... and call up ... there's [Jacoby] Ellsbury."

A trove of information pops up about the Boston centerfielder.
It includes some proprietary statistical data, including Boston's
in-house defensive metrics (the popular ones cannot be trusted,
especially in one-year samples) and an overall empirical valuation that
combines offense, defense and baserunning metrics. Carmine automatically
updates the numbers, including projections, every day for every player
in professional baseball.

Carmine also guards less quantifiable data, including the first
report filed on Ellsbury in 2003, two years before he was drafted, as
well as eight follow-up reports chock-full of anecdotes culled from
interviews with his coaches, trainers, college SID, opposing coaches,
summer league coach and others. There is a story about a foot injury "no
one knew about" that explained a brief slump in the Cape Cod League in
'04. There is the story of the day in '05 when two cross-checkers worked
out Ellsbury in a San Diego gym because of rain: The 21-year-old picked
up a stray basketball and threw down a monster dunk, confirming their
reports on his athleticism. All those notations—which a decade ago would
have consumed just two or three sentences under "makeup" in most teams'
player files—are separate from the actual nuts-and-bolts scouting
report on his skills.

Each spring the typical area scout for the Red Sox will follow
about 50 players on his watch list. Cross-checkers will see about 100
players each. They all file background reports with Carmine every time
they see a player. "That's a lot of information," Epstein says. "But
that's where you get the edge. You're not going to have the most success
with the most obvious, readily available information."

In short, I have gained a new found appreciation for the power of information and the importance of those mechanisms, institutions, and entities that distribute said information. It is becoming more and more apparent that in the modern game, knowledge truly IS power. As fans, it's fun for us to think of GMs as guys who wheel-and-deal to make winning trades solely on the basis of their individual brilliance and charisma. In reality, the role of the GM is to design and construct an organization that supports decision making by increasing the probability of making correct decisions. Think of the massive advantage to be reaped by an organization structured in such a way that the probability of making a successful decision is increased by 15% on each and every decision (i.e. trade, draft pick, free agent signing, etc) to be made. Over the life of an organization, the payoff would be massive. Accordingly, much of the organization is designed solely for the purpose of collecting and generating valid information, ensuring the proper flow of that information up to the proper decision maker, and enabling that decision maker to access it in a usable format. Further, establishing that type of structure is what generates long-term, sustainable success, as it doesn't rely on individuals, but rather on the collective power of the organization.

It remains to be seen to what degree the Reds utilize such a data-driven system, but the competition is certainly hitting the ground running. Make no mistake, competition is coming to the NL Central. Ultimately, competition leads to one of two outcomes: 1) it drives an organization to improve efficiency and effectiveness in order to succeed or 2) it destroys organizations that fail to adapt and evolve to meet the challenge. It remains to be seen which path the Reds will follow, but the competition has arrived on the shores of the NL Central and it's here to stay. The Reds need to be ready to meet the challenge. And, they need to start now.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Homer Bailey continues to be an enigma. He arrived in 2007 amidst much fanfare, reputed to be an elite pitching prospect with dominating stuff in an organization that simply didn't produce them. However, despite the hype, the reality has proven to be something else entirely.

From the moment he arrived, Homer has somehow managed to be less than the sum of his individual parts. Not only did his performance disappoint, but his stuff was underwhelming. He resembled nothing like the top of the rotation power pitcher that was rumored to be climbing the organizational ladder. He seemed to lack an understanding of how to pitch, which limited the effectiveness of his repertoire. He showed flashes of brilliance, but overall it has been a long, disappointing career arc for Homer. However, slowly but surely, Homer has been trending upwards over the years. Now, those improvements may have reached the critical mass necessary for a true breakout performance in 2012.

First and foremost, Homer has demonstrated linear improvement in his walk rate. In each and every season since 2007, Homer has reduced the rate at which he puts hitters on base per via the base on balls. And, the benefits of putting fewer runners on base are obvious, as fewer base runners typically means fewer runs allowed. Here's how Homer has done in this department:

BB/9

2007: 5.56
2008: 4.21
2009: 4.13
2010: 3.30
2011: 2.25

In addition to improved control, resulting in fewer walks, Homer has also demonstrated improved command, resulting in an improved ability to control the strike zone. For example, Homer is trending upwards in First Pitch Strike Percentage (F-Strike%). As you would guess, F-Strike% is just the percentage of "batters faced" for which the first pitch was a strike. This includes anytime the count was 0-1 after the first pitch and anytime the ball was put in play on the first pitch. It's obvious that a pitcher will get better results when working in a pitcher's count than in a hitter's count and, not surprisingly, statistical analysis bears this out. So, the more often a pitcher can get ahead of a hitter, the better results he is likely to produce.

All that said, here is how Homer has done in the first-pitch strike department since he first arrived on the scene in 2007:

F-Strike%

2007: 54.6%
2008: 57.8%
2009: 55.7%
2010: 60.4%
2011: 62.4%
Once again, Homer is demonstrating tangible improvement in his pitching skills. The Major League average F-Strike% for all players from 2005-2008 is 59%. Since 2007, Homer has improved his ability to start each batter faced off with a strike, which tilts the probability of success decidedly in his favor.

Another area in which Homer has demonstrated marked improvement is in his ability to generate swinging strikes, which is an underrated attribute in a pitcher, as there is a correlation between swinging strikes and strikeout rate.

Here's how Homer has done since 2007:

SwStr%

2007: 8.9%
2008: 5.4%
2009: 7.9%
2010: 8.4%
2011: 9.3%

League average for SwStr% is roughly 8.0%, so Homer has gradually improved to the point where he's well above league average. Obviously, there's some overlap in these areas of improvement, as his ability to throw more first pitch strikes puts the hitter on the defensive and his improved command inside the zone also improves the overall effectiveness of his offerings. In light of the improvements Homer made in both first pitch strikes and swinging strikes, it's not surprising that he has also improved his strikeout rate, which now falls more in line with a power pitcher profile.

Here are Homer's strikeout rates since he first arrived on the scene:

K/9

2007: 5.56
2008: 4.46
2009: 6.83
2010: 8.26
2011: 7.23

The improved strikeout rates over the past two seasons have been encouraging, as the low strikeout rates early in his career long
belied the scouting reports on his plus stuff. Basically, it appears the
former is finally coming into line with the latter.

The upward trend makes it likely that Homer has finally learned how to properly harness his arsenal. At this point, his skills have improved and made him into more of a pitcher, rather than just a thrower. However, there are two components of production, (1) performance level and (2) work load. It doesn't mean much to have an elite level of performance if you can't provide that performance level over a significant workload (i.e. Rich Harden), just like it doesn't mean much to provide a massive workload at a mediocre performance level (i.e. Bronson Arroyo circa 2011). So, while Homer is pulling his performance level upward, he still needs to maintain that performance level over an appreciable number of innings.

So far, that has been problematic for Homer, who has put up the following workloads in his career:

Total IP

2007: 45.1
2008: 36.1
2009: 113.1
2010: 109.0
2011: 132.0

Final Thoughts

When I got around to looking at Homer this offseason, I was surprised to see that his peripherals were lining up rather nicely for a breakthrough season. While there remains no guarantee of health and Homer has yet to log more than 132.0 innings in a season, he is definitely trending in the right direction. And, given that his improvement is a trend (largely linear over each successive season), it's easier to be confident that his improvement is sustainable, evidencing a possible breakthrough, than it would be if his improvement was more erratic and volatile.

If Homer can maintain his 2011 level of performance, then he should have a good 2012 season. But, if he increases his performance level yet another tick in 2012, then he could have a very good season. And, a very good season out of Homer Bailey would give the Reds starting rotation a very formidable troika.

At this point, it's looking like the question isn't whether Homer will be better in 2012, but rather by how much? If I was a betting man, then I'd have to look at these peripherals and say "quite a bit."

About Me

Blessed (or is it cursed) to be a Reds fan. I've loved baseball as long as I can remember. Played it until they told me I couldn't anymore. Now, always thinking on it.
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